"A deeply meditative book in the vein of Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass." --Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus As a child in the foothills of the Himalayas, Priyanka Kumar was entranced by forest-like orchards of diverse and luscious fruit--especially apples. These biodiverse orchards seemed worlds away from the cardboard apples that lined supermarket shelves in the United States. Yet on a small patch of woods near her home in Santa Fe, Kumar discovered a wild apple tree--and the seeds of an odyssey were planted. Could the taste of a feral apple offer a doorway to the wild? In The Light Between Apple Trees, Kumar takes us on a dazzling and transformative journey to rediscover apples, unearthing a rich and complex history while illuminating how we can reimagine our relationship with nature. Apples are popular, but in our everyday lives we rarely encounter more than a handful of varieties: of the sixteen thousand apple varieties once celebrated in America, scarcely a fifth remain accessible. Kumar reveals the richness of a hidden world, bringing readers to the vibrant forests and orchards where historic trees still survive. These mature and wild orchards offer more than just fruit: they are havens for creatures from hummingbirds to bears and a living connection to generations past. She brilliantly weaves together science and childhood memories with the apple's storied history, from its roots in Kazakhstan to Spanish orchards in the Southwest and Thomas Jefferson's beloved Monticello fruitery. The Light Between Apple Trees is a lyric odyssey that will forever change how you look at an "apple a day." Kumar shows how--if we follow untamed paths--the tang and texture of an apple can lead us back to the wild.
Priyanka Kumar is the author of Conversations with Birds, widely acclaimed as "a landmark book" that "could help people around the world rewild their hearts and souls" (Psychology Today). Kumar's essays appear in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, Orion, and Sierra magazine. She has been featured on CBS News Radio, Yale Climate Connections, and Oprah Daily, and her awards include an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award, an ICJS Fellowship, a New Mexico/New Visions Governor's Award, an Aldo Leopold residency, a Canada Council for the Arts Grant, and an Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Fellowship. She holds an MFA from the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts and is an alumna of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She wrote, directed, and produced the feature documentary The Song of the Little Road, starring Martin Scorsese and Ravi Shankar, which premiered at Telluride and is in the permanent collection of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Kumar taught at the University of California Santa Cruz and the University of Southern California, and serves on the Advisory Council of the Leopold Writing Program. She completed a Climate Master certification in 2025.
